I bet Skip Lisle has something to say about this.

Vermonters struggle with beaver-related property damage

JOHNSON, Vt. (WCAX) – Beavers are our neighbors across the region, but they aren’t always the best group to share property with.

Rob Maynard and Deb Ravenelle and their yellow labs have lived in Johnson for over 20 years. In that time, they’ve been sharing their property with a bundle of beavers. They say they love seeing the beavers, but the cute rodents don’t always make it easy when they build their dam on culverts.

“If they plug it up completely — which they will — it’ll wash over the top of the road and start to wash out the roads. So, when you’re here, it’s often a daily battle to keep the road clear,” said Maynard.

The couple says their driveway will flood every few years when the beavers move in. They have already set up shop this summer, so they have been clearing the culvert out every few days for a month.

So Skip would say that the devices installed by VFW fail at an alarming rate and its bad for people to  see their failure because then they think flow devices don’t work and that leads to more beavers being killed.

Maybe,

But stories like this mean a whole lot of people watching the news learn that maybe they CAN work. More than if just Skip was installing a better one somewhere else. Plus there are NEVER news stories that cover these installations not working. So maybe a handful of property owners and their friends think they don’t work, but many more people have heard of them. And that’s something.

I think it’s a  numbers game. And anyway, call me a cynic but I’d be THRILLED to the moon and back if California Department of Fish and Wildlife started installing flow devices – whether they worked or not.

It would probably be a major step in the right direction>